by Reina Torres
Shaking his head, Adam felt as if a knife was twisting in his chest. “A man. Jack didn’t get a good look, just that he was tall and looked out of place. He thought he was with Blake.”
“And your sister?”
He knew the question was coming and it still killed him to think the words let alone say them.
“Jack said she didn’t come back that’s why he came to see me. I called her sitter and Ada is fine and with them, but they haven’t heard from her either.”
Hank shook his head and Sadie curled into his side. “Someone came into our town and took them.”
Adam looked up at him with anguish in his eyes and radiating through his chest. “Yeah.”
Reaching into his coat, Hank pulled out his phone. “We’ll get them back.”
The clerk at the Quick-E-Mart squinted his eyes to look through the plate glass window at the road.
“Who the hell is that?”
There was someone walking down the road toward the store.
That was crazy. They were at least ten miles from the nearest town.
“Uh, Mister Miles!”
It took a moment for the older man to make his way out of the storeroom.
“Mister Miles, look!”
The store owner moved to the front windows and stared out along the road. “What is she doing out there?” There were only a few steps to the front door, but he kept pausing and muttering under his breath. “Crazy fools.”
“I dunno, Mister Miles. She looks like she’s in trouble.”
Nodding, the owner gestured at the door. “Go and help her in. We’ll see what kind of help she needs.”
On any other day the clerk would have grumbled under his breath. Old Mister Miles made him do more than his fair share of work, but in this case, he wanted to help.
Jogging down the road he came up on the woman and stopped short when she reared back, shock apparent in her eyes and posture. “Hey, hey,” he smiled and held his hands out at his sides. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help.”
She gasped in a breath and nodded. “I need a phone.”
“Okay,” he held out his hand, “can I help you the rest of the way. You can call from inside the store?”
Reaching out, she grasped his hand as if it was a lifeline. “Yes… thank you.”
He held her hand and wrapped the other arm around her as they moved toward the store, faster than she had been moving before.
“What- what happened to you?”
“Not me.” Shaking her head, she struggled forward faster still. “My friend. They took my friend. I need to tell my brother.”
Chapter 15
Waiting had never been Adam’s strong suit. Never.
Even When Annalise was in labor, he’d been the one pacing in the room and then outside the room when his sister had all but evicted him from her room. In the time since he’d received a call from his sister at some roadside mini mart, he’d gone through the whole gamut of emotions.
Relief that he knew his sister was going to be on her way home. Hope that Blake was still alive the last time that Annalise saw her. If they were just trying to keep Blake from being able to tell her story then they would have just… they could have just…
But they were taking her somewhere.
And it wasn’t going to be anywhere near. At least not their final destination. Hank had someone running down flights out of nearby airports and his contact in Los Angeles was working with his police contact to see what kind of activity was happening at Megalodon Studios and more specifically what Seth Coleman was up to.
All the while that was happening, Adam felt like he was treading water and sinking deeper and deeper into despair and worry. Until he had both Annalise and Blake home he wasn’t going to rest.
Home.
He needed Blake to come back home.
To him.
His cell rang and he pulled it out of his back pocket, answering it on the first ring. “Hank?”
Hank’s tone was even over the line. “Security cameras confirm that they left out of Bozeman on a private jet. No one’s even trying to hide it. They must be pretty confident at this point.”
“They have a jump on me. That’s all they have.” He was already on his feet, so it only took a few second for him to get to the closet on the far side of the room and slide open the door.
“They have a jump on us,” the other man reminded him. “How do you want to handle this, Adam?”
He had a feeling that the smile on his face was more feral than anything else. Adam could feel the tight stretch of his lips as he reached into the recesses of the closet and keyed in the passcode for his safe. “Go in, get her back.”
Hank murmured an agreement on the other end of the call.
Adam continued with his plan. “Burn it to the ground so he can’t do this again to anyone else.”
There was a silence on the other end and then a slow hum of sound. “Maybe something a little less destructive for the second half of the mission would probably be better.”
Adam wasn’t anywhere near placated. “I can make it look like an accident.”
Hank managed to smother most of his laugh, but Adam could still hear a little snort like sound on the other end. “You spend all of this time turning me down for a job and now you want to go full Rambo on this guy.”
Adam’s heart constricted painfully in his chest. “I want her back, Hank. I want her here, in my arms. In my bed. If he’s touched her again, you’re going to have to make a decision, Hank.”
The silence on the other end was sharp like the edge of a bayonet poised to slide right through the ribs and into someone ’s lungs or heart.
“You’re going to let me take him apart until there’s nothing left but a stake through his black heart, or you’re going to have to pull me off of him and get hurt in the process.”
“I know where you are in your head, Adam, but you know without me having to say a word, that Blake wouldn’t want you to put yourself in jeopardy like that.”
Adam slipped his arm through the cross-body strap of his guncase and set the weight against his back before picking up his go bag laying on the floor like it had been waiting for him.
And maybe it had.
He was crossing the room to the door when Hank’s voice reached through the line. “I’ll have a few hours to try to get your head on straight,” he sighed. “We’ll be on the road in minutes and we’ll pick you up. By the time we get to Bozeman they’ll have a jet waiting for us.”
Adam nodded. Hank knew him well enough to know his answer. “I’ll be waiting out front.”
On his way down the outside stairs, his phone rang again and he answered it with a curt command.
“Adam,” Annalise’s voice was only a tad higher than normal, “I just spoke to Sadie. She’s invited me out to the ranch with Ada. We’ll let the kids play together while we wait for news.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“You’re going to get her and bring her back, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to find her and I’m going to do everything I can to help her, but I’m not sure she’s going to want to come back.”
He heard his sister muttering under her breath. “You listen to me, dork.”
Those were fighting words in their family. She was trying to get a rise out of him. If only she knew what it was taking for him to just try to hold himself together.
“She went with them for me, Adam. She went with them for Ada. I think she had another idea about what to do, but whatever it was, it wasn’t this. Blake didn’t want to go like that.”
“I can’t think about that. I have to concentrate on one thing. I have to make sure she’s safe. Once that’s done… it’s up to her.”
Annalise groaned and he heard the frustration in her voice. “Don’t be so stubborn that you talk yourself out of going for what you want. For who you want.”
“’Lise… I have to go, okay? I have to go.”
�
��Fine.” He could almost see her shaking her head at him. “Just don’t be stupid.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I love you, too.”
When the crew lowered the steps to the jet, Blake knew what she was going to do… everything in her power not to piss these men off. There was a time to be a boss and mouth off but this was not that time.
The airstrip was a private one and based on the care that the facility used to maintain their buildings it wasn’t a well-used one. Looking around at the buildings closer to the fence she hoped that they would keep moving. The windows that were still intact were covered with grime and more than one door gaped open along some edge of the frame.
Nolan shoved her down the stairs and it took everything she had not to fall on her face. Blake was going to be forever thankful that she’d worn the sneakers that Annalise had picked up for her. At least her feet weren’t going to hurt as much. Right?
Robert grabbed a hold of her arm and pulled her toward the fence line.
She turned her head back to see if any of the crew members were looking in her direction.
Maybe, just maybe, if one of them cared enough to look, she might have a chance.
The stairs were almost up when she looked and the only glimpse she caught of the crew was a hand and an elbow as the top part of the door was pulled down and snapped into place.
When they rounded the corner of the nearest building, she felt a little flare of hope burning inside of her. It was one of the heavily tinted black SUVs that practically littered the highways and freeways of California. Still, it meant more time and with that time, came a chance.
A chance that she might survive this.
The back door was thrown open from the inside of the vehicle and one of her new worst friends pushed her closer.
Yes, she wanted to tell them, she got it. Get in the car.
She was halfway up into the vehicle when someone smacked her backside.
Blake gasped in shock as the two men behind her laughed it up.
“Looks like you changed your style,” he scoffed, “now we can see your fat ass.”
Biting back the tears, Blake moved in toward the middle of the seat and reached for the seatbelt. She ignored their mocking comments as she sat still and tried to make herself invisible.
Time was what she needed.
If she had to take a few verbal slings and arrows, she’d do it gladly.
There was one thought that kept cycling through her head over and over and it was that Adam would find her.
Sure, he didn’t want to be with her, but he had promised to help her.
And he was a man who did what he promised. She just had to hold on to that belief that he would help her through this and then she would walk away.
She would give him the gift of her absence, but he would always be with her in her heart. That would never change.
Adam was the first one out of the vehicle and onto the tarmac, the others not far behind him. He barely turned his chin over his shoulder to speak as he walked. “You said this Paxton guy is already on the ground?”
“He’s there and we’ll have LAPD support if we have the time.”
Hank’s words tumbled through his head and almost made him stumble over the thoughts in Adam’s head.
“I just want to find her and get her safe. If I have to do this all on my own. It will be done.”
“Thank goodness you won’t have to do that.” Swede was the last one to climb into the jet and he looked around. “This is pretty fancy. Who got this for us?”
Hank waited for Taz to sit down before answering. “A friend of mine.”
“A friend, huh?” Duke moved his bag aside with his foot so that Tate could pass and sit down on another bench seat. “Someone we know?”
Tate gave Duke’s boot a kick as he stretched out. “If we did, I think Hank would have just said his name.”
Adam watched Hank sit back and let out a breath.
“She has several different codenames, but a few of us call her Wendy.”
“Wendy?” Swede turned to look at Hank with an odd expression. “A few of ‘us’?”
Tate chimed in. “Sounds like there’s a story behind this ‘Wendy’ of yours.”
Duke stretched out his legs and nodded. “Is there a Peter Pan too?”
“Peter?” The odd expression on Hank’s face had nothing to do with the sudden tip of the plane on lift off from the small airstrip in Bozeman. “Yes, actually, but Wendy’s the one in charge of the Lost Boys.”
Swede cast a look around the group. “Then there’s definitely a story.”
“I could tell you all, but I’d have to kill you.” Hank’s expression didn’t have a lick of humor in it. “Just know that if you meet Wendy it’ll be on the other side of hell as you’re coming home. She would tell you herself that you should count yourselves lucky if you never have to meet her.
“Still, she has a few nice toys at her disposal, including this jet. We’ll arrive in California faster than other jets by about an hour. It won’t make up for all the time we lost, but it will give us an advantage.”
Adam flexed his hands into fists and let out a pent-up breath.
“I’ll take any advantage we can get at this point.”
Taz gave him a steady look. “We’ve got your back, Adam. We’ve got Blake’s too.”
Biting the inside of his cheek, Adam managed a few words. “Thank you. All of you.” He could feel everyone’s eyes on him, offering their silent support. “We’re going to get her back.”
It probably should have surprised her when the studio limo pulled up in the shadow of Stage Eight. Of course, they would bring her here. They’d gone through the trouble of bringing Zoe to the sound stage and she knew now that those rumors… that’s exactly what they had been… had been a part of the plot to distance Seth from Zoe’s death.
Washington DC had nothing on the Publicity Arm of Megalodon studios.
Need a fake story circulated? Check
Want to shape public perception? Check
So here she was at the same sound stage were Peggy Lindley’s death had been attributed to the work of a vengeful ghost so many years before.
Zoe Rogers had been its most recent victim if you listened to the whispers.
And it seemed that there were plans to add her to the ever-growing list.
Would her end be gruesome enough to make it on one of the Hollywood Scandal tours that over-charged tourists for a couple of hours in a hot and crowded bus?
One of the men walking ahead of her turned on the flashlight in his phone to look around the immediate area.
Classy.
The center of the old warehouse had been cleaned up. She could see enough of her surroundings thanks to the moonlight sneaking in through some broken glass in the window high above the warehouse floor.
The stage was one of the original ten that were constructed as part of the studio’s beginnings and had office spaces along one wall, complete with a catwalk that lead to the old rigging cages high above the floor.
All together it wasn’t as terrifying as if they’d dragged her out into the canyon, or the scrub brush on the top of one of the mountains.
Yep. Morose.
A single bulb clicked on a few feet away from the ladder in the center of the floor. An old ghost light with a bulb that flared and flickered as if it was almost more afraid of the dark than anything else.
A figure moved near the edge of the darkness and Blake suddenly realized what the light was afraid of.
“Hello, Blake.” The way Seth said her name, a few droplets of spit caught the light and sparkled at the edge of the darkness. “So kind of you to join us.”
“Us?” The question wasn’t planned, just something she blurted out. She looked around the tight illuminated area and saw that Robert and Nolan had been joined by a third man. She didn’t know his name, but she wasn’t exactly interested in making acquaintances at the moment. “Is this a private party, or are we exp
ecting a few more folks before we have supper on the patio?”
The room answered her with silence.
Blake was okay with that for a moment or two, but when she started hearing her heartbeat thumping through her ears, she felt her skin start to tingle with worry.
“Do you realize how much trouble you caused?”
He actually sounded put out.
“The amount of money it cost to track you, your car, and then all the way to Eagle Rock, Montana. I think I’m going to have to take that out of your salary, Blake. Consider it a fine.”
Forcing a smile, she played along. “Okay. That sounds fair.”
Seth’s eyes were a little too bright in the darkness, but maybe it was just her imagination.
“You know, Blake,” he took a step closer, but his gaze was fixed on her face, “I hate to say it but I underestimated you. Looks like you’ve got a brain in your head. Color me surprised.”
Her smiled faded a little, but she was stubborn enough to keep her chin up as she looked him in the eye.
“Imagine my shock when someone from the Public Relations office came by looking for those glasses with the camera built into the frames.”
She had to remind herself to be calm. Or at least act like she was.
“And it occurred to me that you were wearing glasses the night you… stumbled into Zoe’s cabana where we were meeting.”
Her mouth went dry in an instant.
Meeting.
How could he say that with a straight face?
How could he talk about it like it was a meeting over coffee and scones at the coffee shop?
“I think you can guess what I’m going to ask you now, Blake.” He let the statement die in the coming silence. His eyes watched her closely. And she watched him right back. It was odd to look at him now where she was seeing his ‘third’ face. The first had been flushed with the pink of rose-colored glasses full of Hollywood magic.
The second had been the cruel face of a man determined to take what he wanted and try to destroy her self-worth in the process.
And this third face wasn’t any better, as if he’d finally let any pretense fall away. She got to see the real man under the three-thousand-dollar suit and Armani tie.